Rainy Day Bookstore

I have usually loved the rain.  Right now I love the rain because it's helping me to stay home and write, which is very different from how I often enjoy the rain by walking around in it.  One of my favorite ways to spend the rainy days when traveling is at bookstores.  Yesterday I went to two bookstores in Boston for research purposes

Usually I make an effort to support my local bookstores, or the local bookstores of elsewhere.  But Borders appears to really be in trouble, with much thinner stock than usual, and I've also read that they are.  When I found a good looking book for a gift in the Ecology section there, I enthusiastically bought it.  They have a small but supurb and growing Ecology section.

My favorite Boston area bookstores are Trident Bookstore and Cafe on Newbury Street and Porter Square Books in Cambridge.  Harvard Square still has an increasingly unique concentration of bookstores, The Globe Travel Bookstore and Harvard Square Books (which just instituted bicycle delivery) are unique, while the Coop now a Barnes and Noble still has many books before any other at least in our area.

My favorite bookstores elsewhere are Powell's in Portland, OR, Elliot Bay Books in Seattle, Kramer Books in Washington, D.C. and I'm not sure how to answer for London--bookstores still make such a strong showing there that it's hard to say.  In India, books are everywhere, and I already have multiple posts about that.

When I travel, the greatest or most unique bookstore is always on my list of places to find and spend some time.  How about you?  Do you have any recomendations?